Its also no secret that the people who control the government have interests in retaining power and accumulating wealth. Politicians don't even deny that they can be bought, money is free speech after all (http://www.amendmentgazette.com/how-spending-money-became-a-...). Congressmen spend more than half of their time fundraising for a reason.
The policies and actions of the government are not intended to protect you, even though sometimes your interests are aligned.
Digression: my mom loves Hillary Clinton. She's an immigrant, consumes very little American media, but she is a staunch Clinton supporter. Clinton recites all the buzzwords she likes: children, education, security. She views politically radical ideas with deep suspicion and views nonconformity as a character flaw. I look at the government we have, and can't help but think it's exactly what she would do if she were in charge: lots of benefits for retirees, enormous spending on education, vigorous enforcement of drug laws, long punishments for criminals. What exactly would we do differently if my mom were in charge instead of the shadowy cabal of rich people and purchased politicians? Very little.
And the fact is, she is in charge. She's who votes, without fail, in every election. The government doesn't need to keep her in line. The government is what she uses to keep everyone else in line.
I see the same thing when it comes to TSA threads. I know people who actually want the TSA around, and when stories of TSA ineffectiveness come out, their reaction is not "security theatre!", it's "fund them more!"
The point is, the government is literally doing what most of the populace wants it to do. The opinions on HN are in the minority.
But its not true - the government is not to be trusted. It has a monopoly on military / police force, which it abuses incessantly. Moreover, it is effectively controlled by a private duopoly (Democrats + Republicans), with the same motives as any corporate coalition. What's more, corporations effectively control the duopoly. Just look at what happened with TTIP (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/04/secrets...).
And it is not doing what most of the populace wants, if that's not clear from the current election, look at the Congress approval ratings (http://www.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx). It's barely gone above 20% in the last 6 years. And has only once briefly gone above 50% in the past 30 years.
America needs a down round, perhaps... or how does one kick VCs off the board? Dissolve the company and start another one?
Governments have killed way more people than corporations and statistics prove it, thus the average person has a lot more to fear from government.
With that said I agree that we're unlikely to see a world war started by a corporation. I think we're far more likely to see an interplanetary conflict started by a corporation however.
It will be quite an easy thing for an asteroid mining venture to turn into an arms manufacturer the likes of which we have never seen.
Furthermore, just because you can use an institution to do some things for you (if you can call that "being your instrument") doesn't mean you have nothing to fear from it. It does not follow, especially not in the case of the government. More or less every person who's been oppressed by a government could nevertheless say it was providing police and other services to them. If the government were the average person's instrument, as in, a piece of machinery that didn't do anything unless an average person picked it up and used it, and in that case performed exactly the actions the person wanted, then your conclusion would follow [barring accidental misuse and such]. I'm tempted to imagine that you're deliberately giving HN readers an exercise in how to recognize the misleading use of language in a debate.
While I'm on the subject, I'll volunteer that the social contract is a nice-looking facade made up after the fact; it's more like, the government does things to everyone, and afterward maybe a few people decide it was worth it and approve, while others may be displeased but usually lack any effective means of changing the situation, and shrug and put up with it. Further, I'll quote Nock:
"The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner. ... Moreover, the sole invariable characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation of one class by another. In this sense, every State known to history is a class-State. Oppenheimer defines the State, in respect of its origin, as an institution "forced on a defeated group by a conquering group, with a view only to systematizing the domination of the conquered by the conquerors, and safeguarding itself against insurrection from within and attack from without. This domination had no other final purpose than the economic exploitation of the conquered group by the victorious group.""